Brand Ambassador Programs: Walmart Moms And Firefox Friends

Written by: Uri RoosApril 2, 2014

A good ambassador promotion requires an interaction with your most loyal fans; the ambassadors. Brand ambassadors are an effective way to create a positive word of mouth; they are your brand’s biggest fans and voluntarily ´preach to the choir´ about it. To establish a long time relationship with the ambassador you need to give him a stage where he can share his experiences with your brand. You need to give him the tools to make his story exceptional. In this blog, we take a look at two companies that understand the power of brand ambassadors: Walmart and Firefox…

Moms spread the word

The US based supermarket chain Walmart also has it’s way in using Brand Ambassadors as part of their strategy. Walmart considers mothers as it’s best customers, since researched shows that 80% of groceries are done by moms, making them the target customers. So they asked a number of blogging mom’s (the ´Walmart’s Moms´) to blog on a platform created by Walmart. These moms were selected by Walmart for their content quality and influence. On the Walmart mom platform they discuss specials deals, budgeting tips, product reviews, and so on. Besides the Walmart platform, other channels like Youtube and Facebook are also used. These mom’s are easy to connect with for customers, while not being paid spokespeople. They are ambassadors that customers are willing to trust and believe. As one of the mom´s Katja Presnil says on clickz.com: ´The ones who genuinely want to help other people out, without asking for anything in return, those are the people that other people want to follow and make sure those voices are heard’.

Walmart shows us a great example of how you can ask your fans to engage and create their own content. By giving your ambassador a place where they can exchange their knowledge and their experiences, your brand can establish a long term relationship with your customers. Those customers that can be counted as your biggest fan are enabled in this way to spread word of mouth about your brand.

Firefox´ friendsIn an effort to deploy their users as a marketing tool, Mozilla’s Firefox web browser, set up online community platform called Firefox affiliates. This page allows users to promote Firefox to their friends, and win prizes while doing this. Users can download Firefox download buttons for their webpages. The ambassadors (or ´affiliates´ as Firefox calls them) that are the most active are shown on a leaderboard. And we love leaderboards that adds a dash of competition to the campaign.

Mozilla uses this campaign to promote Firefox with their ‘partners’. This way Mozilla has access to an enormous database of Brand Ambassadors that promote Firefox for free. The use of fans to promote your products is an innovative way to maintain high engagement with your customers while keeping low marketing costs. Firefox shows that a competitive element, like a leaderboard for the most active contributors, or a reward program when you have reached a certain amount of points, are examples of making user generated content a pleasurable activity for your ambassadors.